Cicero Quotes

226 Sourced Quotes

What the object of senile avarice may be I cannot conceive. For can there be anything more absurd than to seek more journey money, the less there remains of the journey?

Cicero
I prefer, before heaven, to go astray with Plato, your reverence for whom I know, and admiration for whom I learn from your lips, rather than hold true views with his opponents.

Cicero
All men have a feeling, that they would rather you told them a civil lie than give them a point blank refusal.... If you make a promise, the thing is still uncertain, depends on a future day, and concerns but few people; but if you refuse you alienate people to a certainty and at once, and many people too.

Cicero
But why should not the glorious Rainbow be included among the gods? It is beautiful enough, and its marvellous loveliness has given rise to the legend that Iris is the daughter of Thaumus. And if the rainbow is a divinity, what will you do about the clouds?

Cicero
The recovery of freedom is so splendid a thing that we must not shun even death when seeking to recover it.

Cicero
I wonder... that a soothsayer doesn't laugh when he sees another soothsayer.

Cicero
Virtue is uniform, conformable to reason, and of unvarying consistency; nothing can be added to it that can make it more than virtue; nothing can be taken from it, and the name of virtue be left.

Cicero
But things that happen by chance cannot be certain.

Cicero
The Causes of events are ever more interesting than the events themselves.

Cicero
Wisdom is the only thing which can relieve us from the sway of the passions and the fear of danger, and which can teach us to bear the injuries of fortune itself with moderation, and which shows us all the ways which lead to tranquility and peace.

Cicero
This seems to be advanced as the surest basis for our belief in the existence of gods, that there is no race so uncivilized, no one in the world so barbarous that his mind has no inkling of a belief in gods.

Cicero
In everything, without doubt, truth has the advantage over imitation.

Cicero
They who dare to ask anything of a friend, by their very request seem to imply that they would do anything for the sake of that friend.

Cicero
For no phase of life, whether public or private, whether in business or in the home, whether one is working on what concerns oneself alone or dealing with another, can be without its moral duty; on the discharge of such duties depends all that is morally right, and on their neglect all that is morally wrong in life.

Cicero
Whatever be the subject of a speech, therefore, in whatever art or branch of science, the orator, if he has made himself master of it, as of his client's case, will speak on it better and more elegantly than even the very originator and author of it can.

Cicero
No one regards things before his feet But views with care the regions of the sky.

Cicero